McCain's Drilling Program Runs Into Trouble

Concerns about environmental damage are undermining support for McCain's plans to expand offshore drilling

A recent poll indicated that while a slight majority of Americans want more areas to be opened for oil drilling, around 3/4 of Americans think that we should focus our efforts on investing in new energy technology, rather than on expansion of drilling. Since John McCain has made support for more drilling a centerpiece of his campaign, that result would seem to favor Obama.

Also, most Americans don't think that more drilling will significantly lower gas prices (they're right), and they think that the Bush/McCain proposals to expand drilling are more likely to enrich oil companies than to lower the price of oil.

As if that wasn't bad enough news for John McCain, some recent events demonstrated the folly of opening up more territory for drilling. First, new information became available that further discredits the global warming skeptics. A highly-touted documentary that purported to debunk global warming was cited by British media regulators and climate scientists for lacking objectivity and balance. Also, the American Physical Society reiterated its position that global warming is real and primarily man-made, putting to rest the rumor that the APS had reversed itself. Clearly, global warming continues to be a critical problem, one that is exacerbated by choosing more drilling over developing alternative fuel and conservation technologies.

More importantly for the McCain campaign, congress took up debate on a bill that would force oil companies to use the oil leases they already have, or abandon their rights to drill on that land. The measure would also bar them from selling oil from their offshore drilling operations overseas. McCain and his fellow Republicans oppose the bill, and Bush has threatened to veto it. But if the purpose of granting offshore leases is to reduce the price of gas, shouldn't the Republicans be in favor of this measure? Why wouldn't they want to force oil companies to drill on existing leases and to sell their oil in the United States, unless the real purpose of expanding offshore drilling is to enrich the oil companies?

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Luck was on John McCain's side earlier in the week. McCain had planned to try to upstage Obama's gigantic rally in Berlin by speaking in front of reporters on an offshore oil well, but that plan was doused by Hurricane Dolly. Just imagine how that would have looked: Obama burnishing his foreign policy credentials by wowing our closest allies while McCain speaks of the need to expand offshore drilling... on a day when there was a major oil spill in the gulf of Mexico.

(cross posted at Liberal Avenger and appletree)

How bad was John McCain's speech? REAL bad.

Lesson 1: If you use a solid green backdrop for your speeches, the folks at Sadly, No! will be able to put porn into the background

John McCain tried to upstage Barack Obama by scheduling a speech for the day that Obama was expected to declare victory. That wasn't very bright. McCain should have known that he couldn't keep the attention of the press while the first black major party candidate claimed the nomination, any more than he could have upstaged Eisenhower on V-E Day. But if you're going to try to draw the spotlight, make sure you're prepared to give a good performance.

How bad was McCain's performance? Take a look:

Read more »

Crooked McCain's Iraq Trip Con ...

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We see McCain buggered off to Baghdad to try to prove his big fat porky point about what a peaceful place it is.

Well, we wonder whether he's had a chance to see what we've seen yet.

What John McCain Didn't Tell You

by Larry C Johnson

While John McCain was excoriating the press in Baghdad yesterday for not presenting the "full story" about how swell things are in Iraq he neglected to mention the pre-visit security sweep that made that neighborhood stroll so safe.

I am sure you have already heard about the 100 soldiers, the three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships that accompanied his entourage, but did you hear about the soldiers who swept the area before the American legislators and their security team showed up?

Who cares about those mooks? They are expendable.

John McCain and Lindsey Graham put American soldiers' lives at risk just so they could have a photo op. That's the bottom line.

Why didn't they do a ride along on a real patrol? Perhaps they could have joined the U.S. team that responded to an ambush of an American patrol yesterday? Of course a total of six U.S. soldiers died in that operation.

Read the rest of this report at 'No Quarter'.

Who the hell does this man McCain think he's kidding with this kind of crap?


And anyway, in order to find out for himself any real, everyday Iraq facts at all, he needn't have bloody bothered going anywhere.

Other than right here.

And don't just take our word for it; go see for yourself.

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